She swiveled the scope back to the main entrance. Still just the three bodies, so perhaps their secret arrival was intact. Assumptions could prove deadly, though.
She left the sniper rifle and goggles for Benny to retrieve once the attendees were distracted by the assassins. They jogged toward the bakery along the dirt path lined with trimmed hedges and dim lamps. Anyone looking out could spot them. Adrenaline tempted her to sprint, but again, the last thing they needed was a bad fall.
The main path veered left, while trodden grass to the right made its own path to the bakery. Once they arrived at the bakery entrance without incident, they stepped over the two corpses and stood on either side of the open doorway. Joy removed a quarterstaff from her back and pulled off her ski mask now that they’d be in full view anyway. Kaden removed hers too, then entered the bakery, ready for swarms of armed men. Instead, three bakers, dressed in jeans and heavy metal band T-shirts, occupied the cavernous room. A red-faced sweaty man worked the oven, and the other two kneaded dough shoulder to shoulder.
Without taking his eyes from the dough in the oven, the baker screamed, “We gave you enough bread! We’re busting our asses making double the original order—we won’t do any more!”
The other two stopped kneading and looked at the intruders up and down. Their expressions were puzzled, not afraid, which was a graze of luck.
Kaden stood there, stunned and contemplating if she should kill them, when Joy shifted her hip to one side and relaxed the rest of her body. She said, “Oh, my apologies. Edward invited us to entertain the guests. They must be into some kind of kinky, ordering these costumes.”
All three men stared, surely noticing how tight their clothes were. Kaden suddenly felt tiny. The baker yelled again, “They’re in the ballroom upstairs. We’re asking for a raise after this. They order strippers, and we sweat our balls off making bread because Edward has an obsession. I don’t have time for this.”
“Maybe you will later,” said Joy, winking at him and already moving. She stopped and turned to Kaden. “You coming?”
Kaden defrosted and hustled from the bakery. The hallway was lit by fake flickering candlelight. They found the stairs up toward the party.
Every noise carried in the stone castle, so they stepped lightly. The buzz of the party grew, echoing enough to sound like constant moaning, with occasional shouts. Bathrooms were next to the stairs, and they slipped into the men’s room.
The two men relieving themselves in the urinals didn’t react when the assassins entered the room. Kaden took out her short knife. When Kaden quickened her steps, one man looked up and raised a hand, but too late. He died without a peep.
A loud thonk sounded behind Kaden, signaling Joy handling the other one. The quarterstaff was better for stealth, because the knife had made a mess.
“Let’s get them into the women’s bathroom.”
They dragged the bodies across the hall. If someone were to turn the corner on their way to the bathroom, they’d be within feet of them. They slid behind the door. She grabbed a stack of towels and wiped the streak of blood on the floor. The dimness of the hall would have to hide the splotches between the cracks. She threw the two men’s nearly full beer bottles into the trash, then ran back into the women’s bathroom.
Kaden said, “Let’s do that as many times as we can. The trick is shaving them off before they realize we’re here. How does that sound?”
“Like a half-baked, on-the-fly plan, honey. A good deal better than no plan.”
“Okay. If there’s only one, I need you to bop him with your quarterstaff. Less messy.”
“They might be alive still.”
“I’ll have Goose KO them for twelve hours.” For better or worse, this assault would be long over in twelve hours.
“Didn’t you want to kill all of them?”
“I wanted to, but maybe it's not best to kill everyone. Only if they’re between us and Edward.”
“I see.”
The bathroom fell into silence as they waited for another set of footsteps. It didn’t take long.
The party was a marathon Jonas hadn’t trained for. Granted, everyone was getting along and having fun, but he couldn’t convince himself that he belonged. It was one thing to support the marketplace that these guys used; it was another to schmooze with the sellers. Now that the website ran without Edward, their roles were building and maintaining relationships with vendors. That was the purpose of this extravagant party, alongside celebrating Sub Rosa’s success and the death of the terrorists.
Jonas could get behind that.
Tonight, he had put in the effort to socialize, even though Edward had told him since day one to trust no one. Jonas didn't know how to be friendly while not trusting people. It seemed… political. A rotten irony, because Edward despised politicians. The whole matter confused Jonas, so an hour ago, he’d decided to go with the flow and disappear to explore the castle when he needed a break.
So Jonas stood listening to a drunk Malaysian kingpin, who was so small that Jonas had to remind himself that this ruthless man could kill him and forget about it by tomorrow. As Jonas munched on yet another piece of heart-shaped fudge, he half listened to the slurred speech. The man blabbered about Malaysia’s beauty, how a young man like Jonas would love the sights. After a long soliloquy, the man rustled in his pocket for a cigarette, and over his shoulder, Jonas spotted the baker tapping Edward’s arm.
Jonas pursed his lips as they talked. Although Edward was enjoying himself now, a problem with the bread would sour his mood. He considered fresh bread the ultimate luxury. To Jonas’s surprise, both Edward and the baker glanced at him.
Without thinking, Jonas sidestepped so the pair was directly behind the kingpin, and he set his eyes on the man’s wrinkled forehead, but his attention on Edward. The man huffed the cigarette. Jonas said, “Tell me about those sights, then.”
“The sights!” the kingpin exclaimed, then blew the smoke in Jonas’s face, disturbing the view for a moment. Jonas’s nostrils burned, and he suppressed a cough.
Edward’s face had fallen and body stiffened, meaning there was work to do. Jonas hoped that it wasn’t something stupid he had done. Edward was endlessly patient with him as he learned, but Jonas hated to disappoint the man who had rescued him off the streets, opened limitless possibilities for him. As if the imagined mistake was fact, his face burned with embarrassment.
A moment later, Edward said to the kingpin, “Excuse me, I need to steal Jonas away for a moment.”
The kingpin twirled, looked up at Edward, and said, “I am telling him about our gorgeous women!”
Edward’s smile didn’t reach his eyes as he said, “Jonas has much time to meet them in person.”
“One day, I will shower you with promiscuous women! Now get out of my sight.” The man swayed and stepped toward the bar.
Jonas followed Edward with a rock rising in his throat. They walked across the castle, all the way into the grand office, which was fit for the president, with a wide, red-carpeted expanse with gold trim. Edward blurted, “There are more survivors from that… authoritarian organization.”
“Oh.” Jonas’s heart sank to his feet. That was a big mess-up on his part. They rarely harmed anyone, but if they did, Edward needed it done correctly. To completion. In this case, he wanted everyone in that organization scrubbed away.
“That’s not everything.” Edward made his way to the cherry desk and leaned on it. He put his forehead into his hands, and after a moment, straightened. “They’re here.”
“What!” Jonas's mind blanked and mouth dropped open.
Edward pushed up his glasses and talked quickly. “It’s two women, extremely lethal. You come across them, you run or hide until you can run. Don't even give them a good look. I have a special job for you. Go outside and check the grounds. See if anyone else is out there and try to bring them in if they don’t resist. Or, come back here and I'll have a guard go with you to bring them in. Use your best judgement
. Once you’ve covered it—and Jonas, use a fine-tooth comb—come back and find me at the indoor pool. Go directly there, no matter what. Understand?”
Whenever Edward withheld the entire truth, his nostrils flared. His nostrils were practically caves now, so Jonas wasn’t meant to know the truth yet. Jonas hoped that one day, Edward would truly trust him.
Jonas said quickly, “Got it.” Within seconds, he walked out the main entrance and nearly slipped on the steps. How disappointing, that the night had degraded into mopping up remaining terrorists. He peered into the garden, barely lit by lamps.
To be methodical, he’d start with the large building to the left and cover every inch of the grounds as he crossed to the right. Since he had learned the castle grounds like the back of his hand upon arrival, there was no one better suited for the task. He would find everything, down to every piece of litter or critter poop. He marched over the short bridge.
And froze. A faint red light peeked out from the top of the narrow stone staircase. He crept closer, then edged up the steps. No one should be up there. Jonas grasped his pistol from his belt as he heard a man speaking softly.
“Okay, goose, what she means is approach from behind. Get a couple laggers, and before they notice, hide again. No glimpses, even.” A short pause. “Yes.”
A guy sat on the floor, staring at a laptop. He wore a plain black baseball cap. Jonas brought up his gun and paused, realizing he recognized him. He was walking with his sister in Boulder. What on earth was going on?
The guy had noticed him and stared wide-eyed at the barrel of the gun. Maybe he should shoot him and be done with it, but that would sever the thread to Kaden. Jonas said, “You’re good with computers.” That could be useful.
The man’s Adam's apple bobbed. “Yeah.”
“Any weapons on you?”
“No.”
There was the justification Jonas needed to bring him to Edward. “Come with me.”
“What if I don’t want to? You look familiar.”
That’s because you hang out with my sister. Jonas couldn’t let him figure that out, though. “That’s likely. Get up.” He aimed the gun at the taller man’s cap, which was riding a little high under the beginnings of an afro.
The guy put the laptop on the floor, then moved to stand. He said, “Goose, plan C.”
Jonas pistol-whipped him in the face. Blood splattered onto the floor, and the guy toppled, hitting stone on the way down. He didn’t react otherwise.
Jonas snarled, “I said let’s go! You’re not a free man anymore. Leave your crap. Honestly, I should have killed you the moment I saw you.”
The guy was standing in good time—maybe he wouldn’t cause trouble. Jonas barked, “Try anything funny and I'll see if I can blow the cap off your head.”
Ten
The women waited in the stalls for their prey. One man didn’t look up once, instead swaying in place as Joy crept behind him. She cracked the quarterstaff on his skull, then they hid him in the women's room and returned.
They repeated the pattern twice more, neutralizing three more with minor effort. Finally, a pair of men chatted at the urinals. “Rumor has it a few of the Venezuelans got killed outside. The guy throwing the party is trying to keep it under wraps.”
“Fuck those guys anyway. And why does he bother hiding it? Set us after their killers, and it’s like the adult version of hide and seek. I love it already.”
He grunted as the quarterstaff bashed his head, and the other man froze, a perfect target. Once both lay still, Kaden said to Joy, “Honestly, the kid version of hide and seek sounds great in this castle.”
Joy hummed in approval and grabbed him by the armpits.
A minute later, as the women’s bathroom closed, another pair of footsteps echoed down the hall. The men’s door squeaked open.
Kaden said, “We need to brainstorm our next strategy, stat. They’ll notice soon. Also, I've seen way too much... skin.” They hadn’t bothered zipping up their victims.
“Agreed. We did good with this though.”
They headed into the men's bathroom, and Joy smashed her quarterstaff against another skull.
Kaden held open the door as Joy dragged the body out.
A split second before she disappeared into the women’s room, another pair of shoes tapped on the stones. “Hey!”
Kaden’s and Joy’s heads swirled to see a stout man turning the corner down the hall, mouth wide open. As Kaden grasped a throwing knife from her belt, he jogged away, shouting.
The jig was up, but if he reached the ballroom, their opponents would be a deluge. Kaden’s arm jerked, and her throwing knife planted in his spine. He turned the corner, and they heard two heavy footsteps before a collapse. Unfortunately, he’d been yelling the entire time.
As soon as shouts echoed toward them, Kaden ran in the other direction and turned down a hallway. Standing just around the corner, she listened as the steps came closer. She pushed her back against the wall and said, “Goose, do as Joy and I were doing: hide until you run into a few, take them out, and hide again before they know what’s going on. Sow chaos and confusion so they can’t make an organized attack against us. Go now.”
Kaden unsheathed her knife and gripped the leather handle at the sweet spot, where it was balanced perfectly to act as an extension of her arm. She spotted the library entrance nearby. Joy stood next to her against the wall.
Kaden said, “We need to keep them confused. We’ll clean up a few then hustle into the library. Don’t get cornered.” She raised her knife to head height.
Joy pressed herself against Kaden in response, and they listened as footsteps and shouts approached, and guns cocked.
An Asian man popped around the corner. Without moving her feet from against the wall, Kaden jabbed the knife into the soft flesh of his double chin. His eyes widened while a clueless second man appeared. Joy bludgeoned him in the head.
Kaden drove her knife into a third man’s heart as the first shot rang out. Kaden shoved the dying man into the shooter to buy a moment while Joy broke for the library. Kaden followed her, and shots followed Kaden.
Joy sprinted down the library's main aisle and picked an aisle at random to disappear into. Clomping footsteps echoed and flooded into the room behind Kaden.
“Duck!” Kaden yelled.
The room filled with the earsplitting racket of automatic gunfire. The books across the way flew off their shelves as the bullets tore through them. They both crouched lower as hardcover books fell onto their heads and bounced off their knees and feet. The shooting continued to the very corners of the room—this shooter was thorough—until the clip emptied.
A voice with an unrecognizable accent said, “Did you get ’em?” Kaden could barely hear it over the ringing in her ears. Their ringing would be worse.
“Why don’t you check?”
“You check!” said the first voice.
The raspy voice of a man who had spent many years chain smoking snapped, “Fucking kids, we all check. Spread out and be quiet. Maybe we’ll hear the rats scuttling.”
“You say it was two women?”
“I said quiet!”
Kaden turned to Joy, who looked surprisingly calm. Kaden whispered, “They’re stupid to spread out; I think we can still chip at them. Use your handgun freely. They can’t hear a damn thing anymore.”
“Right behind you,” Joy whispered back.
Kaden gripped her Glock .357 pistol and eyed the farthest side aisle, while Joy faced the opposite direction.
Joy’s gun cracked. A woman appeared in Kaden’s view, and Kaden shot her in the nose and ran toward her as she hit the floor.
“They’re over here!” from the other side of the library.
“They just got Martha near me!”
Kaden burst into the main aisle, twisting to face the entrance. She planted two bullets into the chest of a guy stupidly looking at her, ran a few aisles away, and pivoted into the shelves. Joy was right behind her, as promi
sed.
“They’re killing us! Look around every corner, idiots.”
A man jogging by a side aisle locked eyes with Kaden. As he hoisted his rifle, Kaden shot him in the head. He crumpled to the floor. Four down.
“They’re in the aisle with authors G to I. One man in each corner of the room, ready to kill when they try to move.”
They had to leave the aisle to keep them off-balance. Kaden shoved a hole into the books and squeezed through to the next row.
“C’mon, I’ll cover you,” said Kaden, her back to the shelf next to the hole so she could see someone approach from either side.
Joy knocked over a few more books and mumbled, “Getting too old for this kind of squeezing.”
A book next to Kaden’s head exploded. She twirled toward the side aisle and shot before aiming properly. He cried out and dropped the gun and grabbed his shoulder. She shot again, but he disappeared.
“They’ve split up!”
Kaden had to be satisfied with sowing confusion. Kaden leapt through the hole to rejoin Joy.
The chain smoker yelled again, “They split up, we join up. Groups of at least three. These little girls are nothing!”
“First aisle is empty.”
Kaden whispered as she popped in a fresh magazine, “Time to go. There’s a door to the guard house at the end of the main aisle. Run and I’ll cover you.”
Joy sprinted. Kaden followed her to the main aisle and started shooting those at the front. They ducked from view, and one yelled, “Main aisle, headed to the back!” Kaden backed up as she emptied the magazine, letting a second go by between each of the shots to buy time. Likely, shooters edged up the sides, but she couldn’t have any shooting down the escape route.
When her gun clicked uselessly, she twirled to find the open door to the guardhouse only five feet away. She closed the gap and slammed the door shut behind her.
“That bookshelf,” said Kaden, pointing to a bookshelf sized for home use. Joy bolted the door, and while the handle jiggled, they used the it to barricade the door. Forcing the enemy to take the long way bought them seconds. The layout of this room was as the online map indicated: three lines of six cots in front of them, and toward the back were large, empty wooden shelves about twenty feet high.
Unleashed (End of an Assassin Book 3) Page 13
